Last night Ron Paul appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. As a big Ron Paul supporter it was surreal. Leno kept him on for 3 interview segments. Almost every single thing Ron Paul said was met with loud cheers. Comedian/Fear Factor Host/Podcaster Joe Rogan was Leno’s next guest. He came out wearing a Ron Paul shirt. Leno asked Joe, “What part of his [Ron Paul's] platform do you like?” Rogan replied, “Every single thing that comes out of his mouth. I go yeah, YEAH, FINALLY!”

This was not just an appearance on a late night talk show. This was a Ron Paul campaign rally.

During the final interview segment with Paul, Leno asked him his thoughts on the other candidates and went down the list by name. When he got to Bachmann, Ron Paul replied, “She doesn’t like Muslims. She hates Muslims. She wants to go get them.” This probably didn’t win him any neo-conservative supporters. Then he doubled down on this when he replied similarly about Santorum saying he doesn’t like “gay people and Muslims.” Wow. I can’t imagine that Santorum and Bachmann won’t issue a counter-attack soon.

This just further cements my point in previous articles. Ron Paul can and would beat Obama in the general election. His more difficult win is in the GOP primary.

During the appearance Twitter was about 99% positive about Ron Paul, including many tweets saying things like, “I wasn’t sure before, but now I’m definitely voting for Ron Paul.”

Now we can sit back and monitor how the pundits and other candidates react, if they react at all.

First regulations failed to prevent the oil spill, and now regulations are preventing the spill from being cleaned. That’s not unusual. Government regulations often make problems worse, as with the regulations described in the sample letter below.

You politicians constantly tell us that your regulations are needed to protect the environment. But it looks like your regulations are actually harming the environment, by strangling efforts to clean the BP oil spill.

Is there no end to what the President can do — or, rather, what progressives think he should do?

According to Washington historian Doug Brinkley, in an interview with Anderson Cooper, there are plans to force BP to pay for the redirection of the Mississippi River as part of a large Gulf Recovery Act. See the interview here:

Who knows if there is any validity to it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they attempt it. The Obama administration is likely to do whatever it takes to appear “on top” of the situation.

Quote of the Day: “Government’s view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” — Ronald Reagan (paraphrased)

The politicians meddle with everything. For example, when it comes to energy production there are . . .

* Direct subsidies
* Tax breaks and tax penalties
* Liability limits, but also potential fines if you don’t do things just right

What a meddling muddle! This is why . . .

It’s fair to say that the federal government played a hidden role in the BP oil spill. To learn more read the sample letter to Congress below.

We think it would be better . . .

* For oil companies to pay all the costs and carry all the potential risks of each drilling project
* To have all of these costs and risks reflected in the prices consumers pay, rather than hidden in legislation and regulations

With these regulations, the Obama Administration will bypass Congress entirely and implement their climate change agenda. The administration knows what is good for us. Why mess with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution? Why worry about giving the people represenation?

DownsizeDC.org’s Write the Laws Act (WTLA) would prevent this bureaucratic “legislation without representation” and we encourage you to send a letter to Congress demanding that they pass the WTLA.

The EPA’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases is a prime example of the need for WTLA. The EPA’s “authority” comes from the Clean Air Act, though that bill was never intended to be used this way. As Steven E. Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute writes . . .http://www.aei.org/article/101456

* Reducing conventional sources of air pollution in the Clean Air Act was mostly a technological problem–such as removing lead from gasoline.
* The intent and effect of the Clean Air Act was cleaner air, not reduced energy consumption (which has actually doubled)
* But the only way to reduce CO2 emissions is to burn a lot less fossil fuel because there are no add-on technologies to remove carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion
* Which means the EPA will turn into an energy regulatory agency

I spent the holidays reading a wonderful new libertarian-themed novel by first time author James Byrd called, “The Light of Day“. The book explores what could happen if the environmentalist movement is permitted to “run the world”. It’s the future and everyone is required to live underground because living above ground is too environmentally unfriendly.

It is certainly a sci-fi page turner with a fast moving plot and interesting characters. The novel juxtaposes two societies, a society with very little freedom and another that is about as libertarian as you can get. Byrd accomplishes this effort quite effectively without getting overly preachy. There are no multi-page John Galt style speeches. Byrd uses the plot to emphasize the free vs. non-free “fight” in a quite understated way.

I’m sure there are those that will balk that Byrd’s vision of a future where environmentalists control society in such a way, but that’s not really the point here as I see it. The point really is to illustrate that your individual freedom is being assaulted on all fronts, not just the obvious ones.

In November 2009, computer hackers broke into the computer of the Climate Research Unit in England revealing the shady behavior of climate scientists there, some of whom have been literally making up data to support the climate change/global warming hysteria that is gripping the planet these days.

Well, the hackers have done it again.

They have now hacked into the computer network of the Institute for Cold and Hot Study in Burbank, California. Currently circulating around the Internet are the following smoking gun round robin e-mail exchanges between lead scientist Dr. Emmanuel Bogstock and his climate scientist underlings Daniel Dankel of Morbo University, Aspiro Mafioso of the Swedish Weather and Personality Clinic, and Jorge Redenko of Smogstack, L.L.C. in Upper Volta which reveal how sinister the global climate conspiracy really is:

From: d.dankel@morbouniversity.edu To: E.B., D.D., A.M., J.R. Subject: Climate ChangeHow do we get the ball rolling on this climate thing? My university underwriters want to see me working harder on this.

From: bogstock@icyhot.gov To: E.B., D.D., A.M., J.R. Subject: Climate ChangeGet that U2 guy, Bono, to write a song about it. Then DiCaprio will bring his Hollywood people in on it. And Gore will string it all together when he talks about it at a conference somewhere. That should get them off your back.

From: d.dankel@morbouniversity.edu To: E.B., D.D., A.M., J.R. Subject: BonoBono’s turning sceptic. His tour bus got stuck in a snow bank in Fargo, South Dakota a few days ago. I hear he’s starting to have his doubts.

Ron Paul and Barney Frank appeared on Larry King last night to discuss health care and financial reform.

In the first segment they discuss health care:

In the second segment, Ben Stein and Tanya Acker join Paul and Frank to discuss health care and Bernanke being named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”:

Finally, in the third segment, they discuss the public argument between Sarah Palin and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who they would have selected as person of the year, and Obama’s letter to Kim Jong Il of North Korea:

Rather than comment on the discussion within the videos I’d like to comment on how positive it is that Ron Paul seems to now be a “regular” on Larry King and several other main stream media outlets. It’s nice to have his atypical message being heard by so many people. The ability to wake the drooling masses begins by having a mechanism to reach them. Like it or not, the main stream media is that mechanism.

Hackers have exposed emails from the CRU (Climatic Research Unit) at the University of East Anglia. These emails reveal shocking things. And what we’re learning should cause us to pause, instead of rushing through the cap and trade bill.